Cinematic Letters of Note: The Birth of 'North by Northwest'

Are you familiar with the website Letters of Note? If not, the title is rather self-explanatory. It's a blog that shares with the interwebs interesting letters written by, well, interesting people. I'd recommend checking out the site wholesale, but since this is a movie blog after all, I am obliged to point you straight to their cinema category. There's a number of entries there that should pique the interest of even the most casual film buff - I particularly like Stanley Kubrick's letter to the Director of Culture in Italy asking him to reconsider the restrictive rating they had branded Full Metal Jacket with - but the one I'd like to focus on today deals with North by Northwest.

Alfred Hitchcock historians and trivia-loving fans of North by Northwest may already know the story behind how the concept of the Cary Grant starring thriller came to be, but if you're not up to snuff on your Hitchcockian origins, it goes a little something like this: Hitchcock hired screenwriter Ernest Lehman to adapt a novel called The Wreck of the Mary Deare. After a few failed attempts, Lehman told Hitchcock he couldn't crack the novel, but instead of parting ways the now-friends decided to find out a way to work in an idea Hitchcock had long wanted to film; a chase across Mount Rushmore. They brainstormed over possible scenarios that could spark that chase, but eventually settled on the idea of a man who is mistakenly thought to be a spy.